Good old American violence.
Pro Wrestler vs Zombies is a 2013 movie that, well, pits professional wrestlers against an army of zombies. The plot is paper-thin, involving a man named Angus (portrayed by a local Pittsburgh wrestler, Ashton Amherst, and dubbed over by another actor with an atrocious Irish accent) booking a number of professional wrestlers for a private exhibition and siccing an army of zombies on them seemingly in revenge for Shane Douglas breaking the neck of Angus's brother during a wrestling match with a botched piledriver. The film had its first showing in the United States on November 22nd, 2013 in Uniontown, PA after being shown in England and Germany. The film features Roddy Piper, Kurt Angle, Matt Hardy, Shane Douglas, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, Facade, and Reby Sky as themselves as wrestlers as well as many others.Tropes in this film:
- Beat Still, My Heart: Barbara's heart beats a few times after Angus rips it from her chest and before he takes a big bite.
- Big Bad: Angus, a Knight Templar Big Brother willing to set zombie hordes on innocents to avenge his brother's death.
- Casualty in the Ring: Shane Douglas's botched piledriver as performed on Angus's brother.
- Closed Circle: The setting for the exhibition is a prison which is locked down, and the main characters have their cell phones confiscated before the match for unspecified reasons. The last third of the movie ignores it by cutting to Piper and Schuman being outside with no explanation for how they got out.
- If I Do Not Return: Douglas and Duggan share promises that if one of them falls in battle, the other will tell their family.
- Improvised Weapon: Fortunately for the protagonists, one of the prison lockers seems to be loaded with baseball bats, crowbars, and machetes. And, of course, Hacksaw Jim Duggan wields his trademark 2x4.
- Made of Plasticine: Zig-Zagged for both the zombies and the humans. Often used for Rule of Funny with wrestlers applying a move to a zombie and having the zombie come apart in the middle of it.
- Mercy Kill: Piper offs a zombified Duggan with his own 2x4. It's surprisingly touching.
- Neck Snap: Used several times by the wrestlers to kill the zombies, generally from a sleeper hold.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Different throughout the film. Sometimes they lurch. Sometimes they run. They range from ripping apart victims with their bare hands to only being able to ineffectually pummel the good guys. Some of them recover from horrible injuries, but most seem to die with any mortal wound that would kill a human. For the most part, the infection seems to be spread by bite, but later, older corpses are raised by Angus. And all of the zombies vanish after the two ritual victims are killed.
- Patient Zero: There are two zombies made in the film by a ritual. Damaging them seems to hurt Angus and eliminating them and Angus seems to make the zombies completely vanish.
- Really Gets Around: During an argument regarding who has slept with whom, it's established that Piper has slept with every one of the female wrestlers in the movie.
- Villain Protagonist: Shane Douglas feels no remorse for accidentally killing a man in the ring, and spends the entire film abandoning people to save himself.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Averted. Angus raised the zombies to kill one man and the heroes manage to negate all of the zombies by killing the two zombies raised by Angus's ritual, and then Angus.
